Knitting for Others.

I have sad news that I haven't mentioned here yet. My mother passed away somewhat unexpectedly on January 19th, one week to the day after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I don't want to write out the whole story right now, and I'm not sure whether/when I will want to, but it is obviously something that has been occupying my thoughts a lot over the last couple of months. While going through this, I have found comfort in knitting for other people.

First, once I got to Michigan on the 14th, my instincts told me to start knitting a "comfort shawl." I thought of it as sort of like a prayer shawl, except...I'm an atheist and don't pray, so..."comfort" it is. Anyway, I thought of it as something I could knit while sitting with my mom and while thinking about her--so that the shawl would sort of symbolize what ended up being my last few days with my mom (though I didn't realize that when I started it). I purchased some Berroco Vintage yarn at Threadbender Yarns in Wyoming, MI, and started working on a simple stockinette shawl that I planned to edge with feather-and-fan lace. My mom died before I got very far into the shawl, but I continued working on it at home until I had to admit to myself that the color scheme just wasn't working. I went out and bought more Vintage in the heather gray colorway, and started over again, this time knitting the Shaelyn Shawl by Leila Raabe. The pattern is written for a sport-weight yarn in a single color, but I am using worsted weight yarn and striping gray with two shades of teal/aqua. I'm doing the stockinette portions in gray, and alternating light and dark teal for the lace sections. I really like how it's turning out this time. (I was originally knitting the yarn in these 2 teal colors, plus a lime heather green--I liked the 3 colors together, but striping them was a bit too garish for what I had in mind. The gray quiets things down nicely.) Anyway, I will be giving this shawl to a friend of a friend, who is dealing with a serious illness right now. I'm not done with this shawl yet, but I have been working on it here and there, and still trying to use that knitting time to think about my mom.

The second thing that has comforted me through the loss of my mother is the sweater that I knit for her a couple of years ago. Mom loved that sweater, and she wore it a lot. I have some pictures of her wearing it that I will post as soon as I can figure out how to get them from my phone to a blog post. Anyway, as we were discussing Mom's funeral arrangements I requested that we bury her in the sweater. My sisters and brother immediately agreed, and that's what we did (my sister Jan and I also bought her a skirt that she would have loved, plus a cashmere turtleneck to go with the sweater--the whole outfit was very "Mom"). I'm not sure why--as I mentioned above, I am an atheist, and even my mom's death hasn't swayed me from that beyond the normal amounts of "magical thinking" that the death of a loved one tends to cause--but it makes me feel like I'm taking care of her, somehow, to know that she'll be wrapped up in my knitting for all eternity.

And my last knitting-for-others project: I'm almost done with the Cassidy (by Bonne Marie Burns, aka Chicknits) that I'm making for my niece. I've been working on this for awhile, depending on how you define "working." I bought the yarn about 2 years ago but kept delaying the actual commencement of knitting because my niece, who is now 13, kept growing. As 11-13 year olds will and must do. She has gained a lot of height, especially--she now has almost (?) 3 inches on me in height.

Anyway, I'm almost done with the sweater. The body pieces are all done, the shoulders are seamed, and the hood is knitted. I also have both sleeves done, but I need to rip them back to re-knit the sleeve caps because I made them too long. (They are just over 20" to the armpits). I would just leave them and let my niece roll up the cuffs, but the ribbing on this design looks pretty different on the wrong side than it does on the right side. It would just bug me. Anyway, in addition to re-knitting the sleeve caps, I also need to knit the button bands. I'm cutting it perilously close on yardage! I should have gotten an additional skein, because I added a few inches to the length of the body. I think I'll have just enough to do the button bands and seaming, with a very small amount left over--which actually makes me quite happy. No huge additions to stash!

So now I need to figure out what to knit next.... In addition to the designs and yarns I posted about last time, a couple of other things have crossed my radar recently. I've been feeling very drawn to medium, heathery shades of denimy and greenish blue, and big, squishy cables....